The Active Attacks occur for a variety of reasons, sometimes they are planned and other times not. Here, we show the timing of Active Attacks from 2000 to 2023, a critical element for premeditated attacks with the goal of maximizing casualties. As the plots demonstrate, some dimensions of time are more informative than others.
By Year
There appears to be more events in the last five years (mean = 46) than the first five years (mean = 8) or second five years (mean = 16); however, this may be an artifact of media coverage. Events that occurred during the first part of this data collection period likely did not get the national coverage that they do now. Furthermore, technology and search engines have improved dramatically over the 24 years of this data collection period.
By Month
In contrast to the obvious upward trend in attacks across years, there appear to be only a modest trend related to months of the year. Active Attacks tend to peak during the warmer months of the year (e.g., April through August account for 47.2% of attacks), though this trend is not a strong one. The relationship with temperature is similar to trends observed for certain types of violent crime (e.g., aggravated assault, homicide) that also tend to peak during the warmest parts of the year.
By Day of the Week
Active Attacks share no observable association with day of the week. This can be seen by the flat distribution of attacks across the week. So while there may be trends by year and month, attacks appear to be nearly equally likely on any given day of the week.
By Hour of the Day
Active attacks tend to cluster around midday. While attacks that begin at midday exactly are relatively infrequent (only 3.9% of attacks), the majority of attacks occur immediately before midday (8-11am hours account for 25.4% of attacks) or after midday (1-4pm hours account for 24.3% of attacks).
Many in the media attempt to create a profile describing the “average” attacker. The data do not support a profile beyond sex and number of attackers. Attackers were male 96.2% of the time. Furthermore, the attacker commits the attack by him/herself 97.5% of the time. Beyond these characteristics, attackers are somewhat more varied.
Attacker Race/Ethnicity
Most attackers were either Caucasian (46.2%) or African American (30%). All other racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern) only accounted for around a quarter of attackers (23.8%).
Attacker Age
While the median age of attackers was 31.5 years old, attackers ranged in age from 12 to 88. Attackers in their twenties were the most plentiful group compared to any other decade of life. The age-trend of attackers adheres to the classic “age-crime curve” observed for nearly every crime type, peaking in late adolescence/early adulthood and steadily declining throughout the rest of the life course.
Weapon Type
Active attacks can be carried out using any weapon though, in reality, only a very small minority of attacks (6.2%) were carried out using weapons other than firearms (e.g., knife, vehicle). Among types of firearms, handguns made up a clear majority (56%), while rifles (e.g., AR15s) and shotguns were used in 28.3% and 8.1% of the time, respectively.
For instance, on January 8, 2011 a shooter attacked a meeting for U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. This attack happened in the parking lot of a local grocery store. Had the attack happened in the store it would have been classified as a business event; however, since the attack occurred in the parking lot it is coded as a public event.
Location Type
As seen here, the plurality of events happen at places of business (42.8%). Places of business include factories/warehouse, retail locations, and office space. Around a quarter of attacks (26.8%) happened in public (outdoor) spaces. Schools were attacked 76 times (13.4%). These events are aggregated and include attacks on all types of educational facilities, including K-12 and institutes of higher education. Lastly, 97 attacks (17.1%) happened at “Other” locations (e.g., houses of worship).
Relationship to Location
Most attackers have no prior relationship with the attack location.
There were 3,917 people injured in active attacks. Of these, 1,383 people died.
Attacks vs. Fatalities As can be seen here, the number of deaths has been increasing along with the number of active attacks each year. There are some noticeable spikes in the number of death, corresponding to some of the more well-known attacks. For example:
- 2007: the shooting Virginia Tech resulted in (NUMBER) of deaths, accounting for (%) of active attack deaths that year
- 2009: Fort Hood
- 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut
- 2017: Las Vegas, Nevada
Of note, while the number of active attacks did not decrease during the COVID-19 pandemic, the lethality of attacks did decrease to less than half the number of any of the four years previous. In 2021, however, the number of attacks increased and the number of deaths returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Fatalities per Attack
INTERACTIVE
Fatalities Across Weapon Type
INTERACTIVE
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Interactive plot (.html)
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Interactive plot (.html)
Attacks & Fatalities by State
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Interactive plot (.html)
It is the mission of the Research Ring at ALERRT to make the Active Attack Data as freely accessible as possible. Please feel free to explore the raw data in the window to the right or download as a .csv file using the download button below.
The dataset is organized so that each row corresponds to a unique active attack. This means that some variables, like attacker characteristics, need some special handling. Because some events involved multiple attackers, variables like age, race/ethnicity, and sex, are given a special suffix (e.g., _1, _2, _3) that correspond to specific attackers. For an attack with only one shooter, the demographic variables ending in _2 and _3 will contain missing values. The suffixes were assigned randomly and should not be taken as an indication that individuals described by variables ending in _1 were somehow more central to the attack than the other people involved.